“Christianity is the true worship and service of the true God, humankind’s Creator and Redeemer. It is a religion that rests on revelation: nobody would know the truth about God, or be able to relate to him in a personal way, had not God first acted to make himself known.” – Packer, Concise Theology, p.3
“In the beginning, God….” “And God said….” “In the beginning was the Word….” So open Genesis and John’s gospel with reminders that “God is always previous.” Our knowledge of God is always preceded by God’s desire and actions to make Himself known.
Theologians distinguish two types of revelation: “general revelation” that God has chosen to make known about His existence, character and moral law through creation to all humanity, and “special revelation” that God addressed to specific people as found in the Old and New Testaments. (See more in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, 7E.) General revelation is not adequate for salvation — observing the beauty of a golf course or a rainbow won’t get a person to heaven; we can only know about salvation through Jesus Christ through God’s special revelation:
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.” (Heb 1:1-3)
What did God reveal about himself with the coming of Christ? This was a question that engaged the mind and heart of Hilary of Poitiers. “…Hilary believed that God can be known only as God ‘has made himself known to us.’ The knowledge of God begins in receptivity, in openness to what is revealed and the willingness to accept what is given.” [Wilken, Spirit of Early Christian Thought, p. 88]
Note the movements of God’s general and special revelation in Hilary: “In his search for God Hilary first knew God through the beauty and order of creation, but only after he had come to know Christ did he realize that ‘God was in the beginning with God.'” This was an “Aha! moment” for Hilary and we are richer for it.
Robert Wilken explains “… The knowledge of the Triune God is grounded in Christ’s coming in the flesh, what the early church called the economy. The Greek term, meaning order or arrangement, in theological discourse signified God’s ordered self-disclosure in the biblical history reaching back to creation and culminating in Christ.”
“Hilary’s book on the Trinity is thus an exercise in trying to understand the nature of God who is known in Christ. It is through the flesh of Christ that the soul is able to draw near to God and know ‘the divine mystery.’ The one God can be known through the things of creation, but it is only through the economy that one knows God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All early Christian thinkers agreed on this point, but Hilary stands out because he not only appeals to the economy in his discussion of the nature of God, but also shows that the Resurrection is the defining event in the economy.
“The first Christians, Hilary observes, were observant Jews who every morning recited the Sh’ma, the ancient prayer of the Jewish people: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might’ (Deut 6:4). As faithful Jews the apostles believed that God is one. Because this is so, as the Sh’ma bears witness, what, asks Hilary, are we to make of Thomas’s confession: ‘My Lord and my God’? How could Thomas have confessed Jesus, a human being, as ‘Lord’ and ‘God,’ and at the same time continued to pray the Sh’ma? The Sh’ma clearly affirms belief in one God, yet Thomas addresses Christ as God. According to the gospels, says Hilary, Thomas had often heard Jesus say things such as ‘I and the Father are one’ and ‘All things that the Father has are mine.’ Yet during Christ’s lifetime these words apparently made little impact on him. It was only when Thomas knew the resurrected Christ that he grasped the meaning of what Jesus said earlier.
“This is a precious passage. Hilary envisions a time at the very beginning of Christianity when Jesus’s disciples were still observing Jewish traditions yet following Christ. During Christ’s lifetime his followers did not grasp fully who he was. Even though some of his sayings imply he had a unique relation to God, and he performed miracles and revealed his heavenly glory to his most intimate followers at his Transfiguration on the mount, his disciples did not have eyes to see who he was. They had sound theological reasons for their opacity. They knew by heart the words of the Sh’ma, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord.’ Hence Hilary asks the question…’How could a faithful Jew who had recited the Sh’ma since childhood, whose prayers were addressed to God the king of the universe, address Christ as God or Son of God, as the earliest Christians did? Hilary’s answer is that the Resurrection of Christ transfigured everything. When Jesus came and stood among the disciples and put his finger in his side, Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!’ When confronted by the risen Christ one does not say, “How interesting,” but “My Lord and my God!” [Ibid, pp 89-91] (emphasis mine)
Sources: